Lost in Suburbia: The King of Cling

Tracy Beckerman More Content Now

Wednesday

Jan 9, 2019 at 9:29 AMJan 9, 2019 at 9:29 AM

Not that I’m obsessive or anything, but years ago when my kids were little, I would carry entire kiddy wardrobes around with me so when my kids got dirty, I could strip them down on the spot and change their clothes. Of course, this started to become pretty embarrassing for the kids by the time they hit 20, so I stopped. It also meant mounds more laundry than was really necessary. But really, what was a few hundred more loads when my reputation as The Laundry Goddess of the Universe was at stake? Eventually, though, I gave up on the whole thing. Did I care that half the time my kids look like they rolled in pizza? Of course I did. But I’d come to realize that a clean kid is somehow unnatural. It goes against nature. It’s like having a clean dog: It’s cosmically unattainable. However, even with my lessening attention to cleanliness, I still had a lot of laundry to do. But for me, the problem was not quantity. My thing, was static cling. I’m not talking about the static that made my daughter’s hair wrap around her head like some electric comb-over. Nor was it the static that my son liked to create when he purposely shuffled across the carpet in his socks and then zapped my nose. And no, it wasn’t the static that made the dog look like a canine Gordon Ramsay. No, what I’m talking about is the evil, fabric-softener-defying, dryer-sheet-resisting, winter static build-up IN THE DRYER that causes all the clothes to come out in one big, shocking, static clump. Call me crazy, but I want sparks to fly when I kiss my husband, not when I peel my clothes apart. “Aaaaarrrrggghhhhhh,” I groaned as I pulled a sock from a towel and got zapped. “I HATE STATIC CLING!!!!” “What’s the big deal,” said my husband. “Just get some of those dryer sheets.” I glared at him. “They don’t work.” He shrugged and went back to reading his magazine while I folded the shocking pile of laundry. Sure, what did he care … I was the one who had to run static interference all season. By the time the socks got in his drawer, they had been surgically separated from the rest of the clump and were nice and fluffy and static-free. But sometimes, somehow, one escapes. Such was the case the day I went to our town hall on business. While I stood talking to one of the officials, one of his associates behind me said, “There’s something stuck inside the hood of your sweatshirt.” With an audible static charge, he peeled the offending article away from my hood and dangled it out for all of us to see: A pair of women’s black thong underwear. We all stood paralyzed for a moment with my underwear suspended between his thumb and forefinger. The men looked at me expectantly, but my mind was a blank. Finally, I came out of my coma, grabbed the panties and said the first thing that came into my head. “Oh,” I said. “Those are my husband’s.” For more Lost in Suburbia, Follow Tracy on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage and Twitter @TracyBeckerman.